[Pil-pc-oceania] exploiting the cacophony of narcissism

Mon Apr 14 07:21:48 EST 2008

Andrew's post included this statement from Thomas Homer-Dixon.

"I believe open-source may turn out to be the most important social
development of the last century, if we use the things we've learnt about
open-source to solve some of our critical challenges - planning for the
future, dealing with energy decline and climate problems.
Developing essentially what I would call an open-architecture democratic
practice."

I agree.  For an example of the organisational ideas that open source has to
offer, see Donovan Baarda's organisation tips below.  These are from May
2005, not 10 hours ago as it says.  Have a look at them, they are concise,
simple, and powerful.

I previously posted these to the list about two years ago.  I think they
have a lot to offer us.

Dave

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by
*DonovanBaarda*

These are some of
DonovanBaarda<http://minkirri.apana.org.au/Wiki/DonovanBaarda>'s
tips on operating organisations learned over the years of involvement in
APANA and various
OpenSource?<http://minkirri.apana.org.au/Wiki/OganisationTips/editform?page=OpenSource>projects.
They may or may not apply to non-Volenteer organisations, but some
of them probably do.

   1. *To get people to contribute, you need to lower the barriers to
   contributing.* Every little minor requirement, like required aproval
   or keys to gates, is sand in the gears. It is easy to get precious about a
   project and only allow people unfettered access after they have proven
   themselves trustworthy or reliable enough. However this usually results in
   no-one contributing. Also see point 3 for why allowing incompetant people to
   do things can be good.
   2. *The person who does something gets to decide how it gets
done.*The act of doing
   *is* authority. The doers get rewarded with the authority to get it
   done. This both requires and contributes to point 1.
   3. *Someone doing something badly is better than no-one doing it at
   all.* If people see something being done badly and care, they will
   help do it better, but until someone starts doing it, it just never gets
   done. This is the consequence of point 2; in order to have any authority to
   say how something gets done, you have to be one of the people doing it.
   4. *If you want something done, do it yourself.* Give notification,
   and just start doing it. Other people will probably start helping,
   particularly if they feel you are doing it badly. It is very rare that
   someone will do something just because you complain that it needs doing.
   5. *Silence is consent.* People will only speak up if they have
   serious concerns about something. If they approve, they will usualy do so
   silently by not interferring. Either that, or they don't care.
   6. *Silence can only be consent if people feel informed.* They don't
   actually have to know about it, but they have to be able to easily find out.
   Pinning proposals on a notice board or posting to a mailing list a week
   before doing something is usually enough.
   7. *If you feel like you are out of the loop and things are being done
   behind your back, it usually means there is no loop, and nothing is getting
   done at all.* see point 4

Hmmm. not sure, but I think 5. and 6. should be combined into *Silence is
consent provided people feel informed.*.

   subject:    **  *(1 subscribers)*

On 13/04/2008, Andrew Leahy <alfski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For those involved in community activisim, getup.org, open-source, social
> networking, online communities, this will ring true.
>
> Here is Thomas Homer-Dixon speaking to students on March 20th 2008 in
> Toronto.
>
>  http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080404_Show_LoFi.mp3 (14Mb - 1hour
> audio recording)
>
> I can recommend listening to the whole thing, but if you want to bypass
> the _downer_ converging catastrophies of civilisation stuff then, skip to
> about 30 minutes in. The part which relates particularly to what people have
> been discussing on this forum recently starts at 36 minutes. I've
> transcribed a bit of it below...
>
> "We have a serendipitous development on this planet right now, at the very
> moment that human kind faces the most serious challenges it has ever faced
> in it's history.
> We happen to have in place a rudimentary infrastructure for species-wide
> democracy.
> The Internet.
> At this moment it's nothing more than a venue for a cacophony of
> narcissism.
> Everybody is blogging at each other and retreating into their Facebook
> communities.
> But it has incredible potential.
> We've exploited perhaps one percent of the possibility.
> The trick is making people smarter collectively than as they are as
> individuals.
> Smarter than the sum of the individuals in the group.
> What tends to happen with human beings, most of the time, is the larger
> and larger the group becomes the more stupidly we behave.
> Up to the population of the whole planet, where we have as much
> intelligence as a protozoa in a petri dish.
> Gobbling up all the resources and pooping up the petri dish.
> In certain places, with certain types of behaviour, human beings can be a
> lot smarter collectively than they are as individuals.
> One area that exemplifies best is the open-source phenomenon.
> I believe open-source may turn out to be the most important social
> development of the last century.
> If we use the things we've learnt about open-source to solve some of our
> critical challenges - planning for the future, dealing with energy decline
> and climate problems.
> Developing essentially what I would call an open-architecture democratic
> practice.
> Creating global assembly's for the mobilisation of people and problem
> solving.
> Not just a thousand or 10 thousand. But a million, 10 million or even
> hundreds of millions of people coming together.
> Involved in collective complex problem solving.
> Now, this is not a trivial problem to solve, the devil is in the details
> of how you structure something like this.
> But of all the things I Iook at around the world.
> All the possible routes to solving this problem.
> All the possible routes to mobilising as a political support and movements
> that we need to face these challenges.
> This is the one that ultimately that sounds most plausible to me.
> And we can all start in our own ways, in creating that mobilisation, in
> creating those networks and developing our plans for the future."
>
>
> Cheers, Andrew
>
> --
> Fact: To manufacture a 3 tonne car requires 50 tonnes of raw material.
> Fact: In your lifetime you will eat 50 tonnes of food and produce 3 tonnes
> of poo :)
> _______________________________________________
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> Pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org
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>
>

-- 
David Arnold
Permaculture Designer
4446 Murchison Rd
Violet Town VIC AUS 3669
03 5798 1679
arnold.vt at gmail.com

www.youtube.com/murrnong
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